HowTo: Create a Self-Signed SSL Certificate on Nginx For CentOS / RHEL

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To create a self-signed SSL certificate on Nginx for CentOS or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you can use the OpenSSL tool. Here’s an example of how to do this:

  1. Install OpenSSL:
# yum install openssl
  1. Create a directory to store the SSL certificate:
# mkdir /etc/nginx/ssl
  1. Change to the directory:
# cd /etc/nginx/ssl
  1. Generate the SSL certificate:
# openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /etc/nginx/ssl/nginx.key -out /etc/nginx/ssl/nginx.crt
  1. Enter the required information, such as the country, state, city, and so on. The common name should be the fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) of your Nginx server.
  2. Add the following configuration to your Nginx server block:
server {
listen 443 ssl;
server_name your_domain.com;
ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/nginx.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/nginx.key;

...
}

  1. Replace “your_domain.com” with the actual domain name.
  2. Restart Nginx to apply the changes:
# service nginx restart

Note: Keep in mind that a self-signed certificate is not trusted by browsers, so you will get a warning when visiting your site. If you need a trusted certificate, you need to purchase one from a certificate authority (CA).

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